Easterday Construction was pleased to support Chris in his Eagle Scout project for Miller’s Senior Living. Great effort!
Community
Damore Amphitheater – Boulders Arrive
Some of the boulders arrived on site last week. Here are a few of them staged and ready to place. Unfortunately there are four truckloads waiting for trucks to deliver them. The quarry is struggling to find transportation to make their deliveries. Our supplier is chasing options and we hope to have the rest of the materials on site soon. FH Deck has already completed most of the demolition on site. We have completed the electrical demolition in the Beach Lodge in preparation for connections to the new pavilion too. We should be ready to rock and roll (pun intended) once the rest of the stone arrives.
This isn’t the only outdoor amphitheater project Easterday Construction has built in Marshall County. In 1995 we built the Plymouth Performing Arts Center which later became the William and Mary Young Amphitheater on Randolph Street in Plymouth’s Centennial Park. That facility has become instrumental in bringing live entertainment to Plymouth and has been an enhancement to the Blueberry Festival. No doubt the new Damore Amphitheater will have a similar effect on Culver’s summer performing arts offerings and should be an enhancement to Lake Fest each year.
Suburban Sprawl in Culver?
Wikipedia defines Suburban Sprawl thus: “Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl describes the expansion of human populations away from central urban areas into low-density, monofunctional and usually car-dependent communities, in a process called suburbanization.” While Culver isn’t exactly racing down the road to strip malls, it’s worth looking at the changes occuring in recent and proposed developments in Culver.
Culver’s early development was very traditional. Despite dealing with the curvature of Lake Maxinkuckee, a traditional grid system was used for both the commercial and residential areas with the section of Lake Shore Drive along the Park being one of the few deviations with some curvature to reflect the lake shore. Since that time, the newer subdivisions have not followed the grid. The Riggings, Maple Ridge and Edgewood Estates are all dead end or loop streets with no plans to tie into the grid. It’s a little cheesy, but Adam Conover of “Adam Explains Everything” does a quick run down of some of the issues here:
Damore Amphitheater – Preconstruction Meeting
We had the preconstruction meeting for the Damore Amphitheater this morning. We had all the staking completed and the tiers painted on the grass… but the paint didn’t show up too well through the snow! (See Right) Happy April!!! Not exactly the way we wanted to start the project…
The timelike on this calls for completion by Memorial Day. Despite the snow fall Mother Nature so rudely dropped on us today, we should still be good to go for that. There may be some plantings that stretch that date if the nurseries can’t open, but it’s too soon to be pessimistic about that. We have most of our orders placed and should be good to go with all of the hardscape.
FH Decks and Landscaping, Inc. will be our major subcontractor on this project, completing the earthwork, stone work and landscape installation. We wanted to keep this project local and were happy that it turned out that way.
This project was part of Culver’s Stellar Communities application in 2016, but through fundraising and other grants, Culver was able to move forward on this project without Stellar. This was done through IHCDA’s Patronicity program. That made room for other project funding in the 2017 Stellar application. Thanks go to the Damore family stepping up as the lead sponsor. Their leadership was invaluable.
Sand Hill Farm in the News
We made the paper this week with our Sand Hill Farm Apartment’s project appearing in the Culver Citizen. Beth Pare and her son came out in the rain for a walk-thru this past Tuesday. Despite the rain there was still a lot of activity at the site. Drywall was being delivered as we spoke.
There’s not much doubt that the follow-thru on our Stellar 2016 application pledge of completing workforce housing helped us secure Stellar Community designation in 2017. Preliminary site work had already begun when the Stellar Site Visit occurred. Our successful Stellar designation makes this phase I of workforce housing. Our application for IHCDA funding goes in this July. We will be starting with a market study shortly and will plan for that construction in 2019.
Progress has been good this week. All but four windows are in place. Those four have been left out on the second floor until the rest of the drywall is delivered. The drywall will be place on the second floor through those openings using a boom truck. The majority of the exterior doors have been installed. The shingles are on. The interior winding stairs to the second floor bedrooms have been installed. And progress continues on Plumbing and Electrical rough-in.
Last week we had meetings with Elkay to discuss the cabinetry that they are providing. They made an additional change to include Elkay sinks in each unit. Thank you Elkay!